


Incandescent

by Laurasauras



Series: Olympus [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Part of a series but you don't need to have read it, Working Past Internal Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26865109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurasauras/pseuds/Laurasauras
Summary: After having the Davesprite part of Davepeta dumped back into his consciousness, Dave has some things to work through. Namely, is he going to keep denying himself love? Karkat's gonna be there for him no matter what.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Series: Olympus [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1435219
Comments: 12
Kudos: 50





	Incandescent

According to Jade and Dirk, reintegrating Davepeta’s Daveness into Dave went as smoothly as could be expected. Apparently, “as well as could be expected” means that no one knows where Nepeta is hiding and Dave’s door has been shut for a week and a half. 

You’ve gotten into the habit of leaving food in front of his door, walking away, and texting him so that he knows it’s there, no risk of seeing you or anyone else. The plates end up washed and in the dishrack without you having heard anything, which means you could probably leave him to make his own food, but you don’t. If he’s showered, you haven’t noticed, which you think you _would_ notice with your room next to the bathroom. You’re pretty grateful to occasionally hear the flush of the gaper, because the alternative is way more gross than not showering.

The first sign of him recovering is a notification you have set up for one of his many blogs, the one where he pretends to be a Dave Strider kin. Dirk assures you that the power-levels of that irony move are pretty fucking high, which you could have worked out on your own. You know you don’t get Dave’s shit the way Dirk does, but you like it in your own way. You like how earnestly Dave explains it to you.

The post reads:

im feelin pretty tortured over being a god today  
as you guys know im pretty sensitive  
i have all these fuckin memories from all times and no times where i was being a badass guardian of the universe and basically the best  
but i gotta be honest sometimes i feel pretty lonely  
almost like i kin a 15 yo dude whose parents dont GET him haha but not really  
we all know im dave and that i feel some pretty deep shit behind these sexy aviators  
anyway i hope my followers enjoy this and maybe take some comfort in it idk its pretty personal but i trust you guys

And then there’s a drawing of a dick sandwich. Like, a cartoon dick between two slices of bread. In the bottom right corner there’s a picture of Sweet Bro with his classic face, half a speech bubble from a previous comic still there like it’s just been cropped without bothering with that shit.

You get up, make a cup of coffee and a shopping list. Then you go back to your room and leave a like. The perfect time: attentive, but not too clingy. 

Yeah, it’s pretty obvious that you opened that the second your phone alerted you to its existence. But that’s okay. Dave knows you care about him. You don’t play cool with each other, haven’t for years. You have a perfect broship, built on over a decade of sharing increasing vulnerabilities, always received with acceptance and love.

Not _that_ kind of love. That’d be just about the only thing that could fuck this up, you think. It’s not that you think he’d hate you if he knew (though you kind of do), or that you’re too scared to tell him (though you kind of are). It’s that he’s told you in fragments how terrified he is of confronting something like this and you won’t put him through that. From his first “just intellectually speaking bro” rambles about Earth perspectives on sexuality, to his nightmares about meeting Dirk for the first time, to his whispered confession that he thinks he might have had a crush on John once that made him look at you like he thought you might kill him for it ... you’ve pieced together that he’s working on it. And he might never be ready and he might never love you like that and you’re okay with that. Loving and being loved like this is _not_ a consolation prize.

A day later and you hear the shower. A few hours after that and he knocks on your open door, slouching in the doorway with jeans and a shirt without holes in it on. _Outside_ clothes. When Dave makes up his mind about something, he doesn’t fuck around.

‘Hey,’ he says.

‘Where are you going?’ you ask him, like an idiot.

‘Uh, nowhere yet. I mean, I thought I’d go see Dirk in a bit, thank him for this premo soul work, but ...’ You watch him compose himself a little bit more, crack a smile that is never given as easily to anyone but you and continue. ‘The question is where are _you_ going, to which the answer is, drumroll please.’

He looks at you until you obediently bat your fingers against your desk.

‘Lukewarm drumroll, but probably appropriate,’ he says. ‘You’re going to _flavourtown,_ motherfucker. Huh, that’s probably like a legit trigger-phrase for Dirk and Roxy, let’s never say that in front of them. Point is, you’re about to have your hunger satisfied as if by a real expensive hooker at the very start of the night, with experience and efficiency, and damn will it be good.’

‘What.’

‘I’m gonna make bacon pancakes, bro. Thought I’d ask if you wanted in on the off-chance that you’ve recently slaughtered and vored an antelope or something, because unless you’ve gorged literally to that capacity I can’t think of a reason for you to not want in on my bacon pancakes.’

‘I’m going to slaughter and vore you in a minute,’ you tell him, getting to your feet. You’re taking this as an invitation to sit at the kitchen table and hang out as he cooks. He’ll tell you to fuck off if you’re overstepping.

He backs back into the hallway, laughing under his breath in the way he does before he gets into the proper direction.

‘Okay, no,’ he says. ‘I do not consent to either of those things and besides, if you vore me then you’ll never get to eat my bacon pancakes again. I know, I know, nothing tastes better than Strider meat,’ and then he makes a strangled noise as if he hadn’t intended that one, despite the fact that he always intends those ones, before proceeding _exactly_ as if he intended it, ‘it’s delicious, god damn succulent, I know you wanna get your mouth around this grade A beef, but is one night of heavenly ecstasy worth the deprivation of a lifetime’s bacon pancakes, not to mention my company?’

His words have carried you to a seat, bacon to a pan and him to a bowl where he’s whisking together dry ingredients. After living for an eternity (not even two weeks) in silence, you’re trying really hard not to smile at the familiar sound of his bullshit. You _missed_ him.

(You messaged Kanaya to distraction asking how Rose reacted to being reintegrated with Jasprose, but she could only tell you Yes She Needed Some Time and She Said It Was Emotionally Taxing And You Know How They Like To Deal With Emotions Alone and Karkat You Are Being A Pest so many times, and it was never quite reassuring.)

‘Okay, okay, I won’t vore you,’ you say, tone much more done with his shit than you’re actually feeling. ‘Here I am, minding my own business and liking pictures of grotesque human genitalia so that you look more popular online, working myself literally to death, and my best bro deems it necessary to verbally torture me. After all I do for this house.’

In the wet ingredients go and then he’s putting the batter down to poke at the bacon, which is starting to smell distressingly good. You fucking _love_ Dave’s pancakes. He grins at you as if your salivation is audible. It better not be.

‘I hear you, man,’ he says. ‘I bet it’s a hardship to make sure that our utensils are organised by size.’

He darts a look at you before focusing harder on the bacon in a way that has your protests and defences dying before they’re even dressed. He’s serious about something.

‘I, uh ...’ he says. ‘I appreciate it. You know. Lookin’ out for me this week.’

‘Oh,’ you say.

‘Don’t make it weird, I thank people, I’m not ungrateful, my momma raised me right.’

You don’t make a shitty comment. You just try and figure out how not to make it weird.

‘You’re welcome,’ you say, kind of lamely.

He nods, still not looking at you. He pours the batter in. You pick at the threading on your chair’s upholstery, then abruptly stop yourself. That’s a Dave habit. You hate it when he does that. You don’t want to replace all the fucking furniture because someone can’t keep his fucking gremlin hands to himself, regardless of whether the “he” in question is currently you or not.

You don’t think of anything to say until he’s putting a plate of three bacon pancakes in front of you. You don’t think you _can_ just eat in silence when he’s right there, so you just blurt out the first thing you think of.

‘So, no bird puns?’

Dave snorts as he drops fresh butter into the pan he just wiped clean with paper towel.

‘Yeah, no,’ he says. ‘I can’t lie, I thought about it. Like, I—ugh, personal pronouns are fucking weird with this kind of thing, might kick it third person styles so I can just, I don’t know, partition this. _Davepeta_ was obviously all about the puns and the roleplaying and, like, having fun? I don’t want to lose that, god, I’d hate to just give up on _having fun._ It’s fucking wild to pull in the experiences (expurriences, haha) of someone who is like me but who ...’

He flips his pancakes and runs a hand through his hair. 

‘Davepeta felt sorry for Dave,’ he says. ‘I can’t blame them, I mean, I currently am still literally feeling it? But fuck, seeing Dave from the outside. Which, fuck off, I’m doing fine. God, do you see this? This has been my week and you only asked if I’m going to make puns or not. If I were I’d still rock the cat puns, bee-tee-dub, the bird ones are good but I don’t need an excuse to whip out the pussy poetry. But I’m not gonna, because I don’t know ... I don’t _want_ to lose that, but I already have, a bit. I can’t ... I need ... I wouldn’t pull it off, is the thing. Ha. I can barely look in the mirror.’

He sits opposite you and stares at his fork, twirling it in his fingers.

‘I mean I can, obviously. You think I got this fly by accident? It’s only when I think about the fact that I’m looking at myself that I’m like woah, maybe not. And in the last week I can look a little longer, but, yeah. Oh, fly wasn’t a pun. Maybe it was. Yeah, let’s say it was.’

‘Dave, you don’t have to tell me about mirrors. Mirrors are for making sure you don’t have imitation grubsauce on your face and that is it.’

He extends his fist and you bump it. It’s nice to have the solidarity. But it’s also probably good if he’s a bit more comfortable in his skin. You’re a bit of an asshole though, so you guiltily hope this doesn’t mean that he becomes some kind of social person. Davepeta was pretty sociable.

He focuses on eating and you still have a pancake’s worth of time before you need to talk again, so you take advantage of that. He eats significantly faster than you, so is almost finished with his three pancakes by the time you get through your last one. When you’re both done, he takes the plates over to the sink, still chewing his last mouthful.

‘I’m, uh,’ he says. ‘I’m just gonna go. You know, while I’m up. Don’t wanna get sucked back into the internet.’

‘Oh, okay.’

‘I’ll probably shoot the shit for a while, but not, like, too long. I want to hang out with you.’

‘Yeah, man,’ you say. ‘I’ll find us a movie? Browsing the streaming shit will probably take longer than even you and Dirk can talk.’

He smiles again, which is kind of contagious, and pats you on the shoulder before leaving. You decide you’re going to do exactly what you promised. It’ll feel good to go back to basics and watch a movie together.

*

You’re waiting on the coffee-maker in the kitchen when you hear Dave open the door.

‘Hey,’ you say, smiling like an absolute fool but at least there’s no one to see you. ‘Good tim—’ but then he’s in front of you, flashstepped, like walking wasn’t fast enough. You don’t flinch because it’s Dave and you trust him more than gravity, but it does surprise you. ‘Hey,’ you repeat.

‘Hey,’ he says.

And then he leans in and kisses you, only your lips touching and so, so sweet, gentle, the perfect first kiss that you probably should have got at seven sweeps instead of twelve, but you wouldn’t change it for anything, heart racing in this tight, uncertain way, nose brushing his cheek, you can somehow feel the proximity of his shades even though you can’t feel them ...

And then he pulls away and your eyes blink without your permission, you feel that pressure in your throat like you want to cry but you’re not sad, you’re ...

(He’s still so close.)

‘Oh fuck,’ he says, and maybe you’d cry now if you were normal, it sure feels like you should be, ‘shit, Karkat, I’m sorry, I thought that would be romantic but I just totally kissed you without warning or asking, I’m an asshole, this is why you shouldn’t learn this shit from mov—’

You put your hand on his cheek, pinky resting on his jaw. He falls silent mid-word. This close you can see how wide his eyes are, can see as they drop to your lips and then flick up again. You give him the opportunity to back away that he didn’t really give you (it _was_ romantic, he was romantic _for you),_ shift your weight to your toes so you can reach and press your lips to his.

He kisses you back and your fingers shift minutely on his face because you want to drag him until he’s inside your skeleton and even then he might not be close enough. His hand alights on your waist as carefully as if you are a house of cards he doesn’t want to tumble, and maybe you are in this moment but you still want him to hold you like he means it.

You don’t really know how people kiss for continued periods, have read enough about them opening their mouths but how exactly that’s done isn’t making itself apparent, so instead you just pull back millimeters so that your lips are barely brushing and then melt against him again. His hand not on your hip wraps around your waist and pulls you tiny shuffling steps closer. When you try to do your back and forth movement again, he waits until you’ve let up on the pressure and guides your lips into movement.

You’re struck, not for the first time because of Dave, by how accurate the phrase _butterflies in your stomach_ is, something beautiful from Earth culture that captures the nervous, fluttery feeling that makes it almost impossible to think. Him easing you out of the kiss doesn’t alleviate it. You open your eyes and startle when you feel a tear roll down your cheek. You squeeze them shut again.

Dave captures your tear with a thumb. Another escapes your closed eyes and he catches that too. So gently.

‘I’ve only seen you cry for movies,’ he murmurs. ‘Not even when you talk about ...’

He doesn’t evoke any of the pretty awful shit you’ve talked about together. You open your eyes again and look up at him. You don’t really have a reason. Maybe it’s happiness. Whatever it is, it’s entirely too much for you to identify it.

You stare at each other for a while. His eyes ask _was that okay?_ and you smile an unsteady smile that cannot hope to hold all your love in it. He looks relieved and his face tells you he loves you too, like it has a thousand times and yet never like this. You feel it in your sternum. 

You become aware of the smell of burning coffee.

‘Oh, _fuck,’_ you say, with feeling. You let him go so you can turn around and pull the pot from the warmer.

‘I told you we should get a better one,’ Dave says. ‘One that just keeps the pot warm instead of heating it ad nauseam. Shit’s a fire hazard.’

‘I like this one! Screw you and your better one! I like coffee from one fucking cafe and from this machine, we get a so-called “better” one over my bloated corpse.’

You put the stupid burnt thing on a cork pot stand. You turn back to Dave. His hands are in his front pockets, shoulders slouched in a way he thinks looks cool but you find utterly and depressingly adorable. His lips are pinker than usual. _Because you kissed them._ Your hands fly up to your mouth, eyes wide.

‘Oh my god,’ you say.

‘Ha,’ he says. ‘You can just call me Dave.’

‘We just kissed.’

‘Solid observation, concise and accurate, lacking some details.’

‘We just kissed!’

He looks down at his shoes and smiles with just the corner of his mouth. Shy. 

‘Yeah,’ he says. He hesitates, glances up at you and then back at his shoes. 

‘What the _fuck_ did you talk to Dirk about?’

He laughs again, but it’s barely a sound, more like a breath. He takes his hands out of his pockets and eases up on the hiding.

‘D’you wanna sit down?’

You sit on the couch together, facing each other so that there’s at least a foot between your hips, but knees touching. You stare, more than usual. You wonder if you’re allowed to kiss him again. You wonder if you’re brave enough to initiate that now that you’ve stopped.

‘So,’ he says. ‘I, uh ...’ he tries to meet your eyes, he really does, but when he stares at the coffee table instead you don’t mind. ‘When I first met Dirk, like, before the battle, before I killed him, ha, remember how I killed him?’

‘Dave.’

‘I basically dumped all my shit with Bro onto him like he was a public toilet and I was desperate enough that I didn’t even care that there wasn’t toilet paper, when you gotta go you gotta go and I’d been constipated for three fucking years.’

‘Yeah, you told me. Different metaphor last time.’

‘Ha. Yeah. And I also ... I ... Like he’s gay, right.’

You hesitate to answer in the affirmative because you’re not sure that is right, he certainly prickles more intensely than a badly placed cactus if anyone calls him that in his earshot. 

‘Definitely into dudes,’ you settle on.

‘Yeah,’ Dave says. ‘And he didn’t say as much but he mentioned Jake, which, wow, what a shit show. And then I didn’t really say it outright, but I kinda, maybe, you know.’

You roll your eyes and say, ‘Dave, you came out to me like four years ago.’

His hand shoots to the back of his neck and you watch him rub his palm against skin as if he wants to drag ink off it. He breathes more carefully than he was, which is one of his stress signs. Ready for shit getting real, strifeways. You’re just glad that his expression isn’t dead, like it can be. You take his free hand from his knee and press your thumb into the soft skin where he used to have calluses. His sword is on the wall, where it would be gathering dust if you were less neurotic. As you massage his hand, his shoulders relax and his other hand releases his neck.

‘Yeah, pretty fly for a bi guy,’ he murmurs. 

That’s how he tried to tell you. You didn’t know the song, but he half-sang it so you thought that was just how it went. He then had to explain the joke, making both of you very embarrassed and leaving your response all stilted because of it. The next day you came home with a cake with the flag colours and he flashstepped away on instinct before coming back and letting you see his gratitude. You hugged. You tortured yourself over maybe someday asking him if his bisexuality extended to you, but him saying the words out loud was such a massive step and you didn’t want to push him.

‘Still had issues, though,’ he continues. ‘Duh, you know that. I been luggin’ around those issues like fuckin’ Lydia from Skyrim, sworn to carry dem burdens, you know. And, I don’t know, I’ve been having some thoughts. You know that too, I think.’

Yeah. It’s not like you never approached because you thought it wouldn’t be reciprocated. You nod. Your cheeks feel hot and your hands go to your collar as if you’re going to pull your sweater up to your nose, the way you did when you were a wiggler. 

‘Davepeta, um. Didn’t really give a shit about all that. Davesprite did, before. Jesus Christ, Karkat, the things John Egbert did to that poor bird’s adolescent sexuality.’ Dave blushes and makes a kind of strangled sound. ‘NotthatIcouldn’tempathise,’ he says in a rush. ‘But you were safe, you know?’

_’You_ were torture,’ you tell him. ‘And also safe. And also ... fuck ...’

‘Yeah,’ he agrees. ‘But, yeah. I wasn’t ready. He wasn’t either. Then he merged with a rogue of heart and they loved easily. Then I got that piece back and I didn’t want to throw that away. But I couldn’t ... I needed to talk to Dirk.’

‘Why?’ you ask. 

His mouth twists. You almost tell him to forget about it, you love him too much to want him to be uncomfortable, even for a second. 

‘It never really mattered to my fucked up thought processes and anxiety that Dirk is gay, because Bro ...’ his breath hitches. ‘Like, presumably he was too? Shit, maybe that had something to do with it, maybe he hated himself for it. He ...’ again, it’s too much for him to speak easily. You stroke the back of his hand gently and he smiles down at it. ‘I just, I really needed Dirk to tell me that it was okay. I needed him to ...’ 

Dave takes his hand from yours so that he can press both to his face, fingers slipping under his shades, palms pressing into his lips so his next words come out muffled.

‘Needed him to tell me he loves me,’ he groans. He releases his face and puts his hand right back in yours. Your pusher jumps. ‘He did, of course. And then he, like, swear to god, not making this up, he fucking noogied me. Like, grabbed my entire head, tucked it under his grody armpit and rubbed his fist in my hair while he told me what an idiot I was for not telling you how I feel because he wants me to be happy so fuckin’ bad.’

‘I want you to be happy too,’ you say, voice strangled. ‘If you’re not ready, if you’re just, like, because you know I ...’

He smiles at you.

‘Yeah, I know,’ he murmurs. ‘I know and you know and we both have for a while, right?’ You nod. ‘Is it okay? That I’ve been a huge fuckin’ idiot?’

You drop Dave’s hand so you can take his cheeks between your palms and look him right in the eye.

‘When it’s us,’ you tell him, deadly serious, ‘it’s not idiocy, it’s not time lost, i’m not, fucking, pining after you and wishing I could own you, okay? You would be the love of my fucking life in whatever capacity, you hear me?’

‘Fuck, Karkat,’ he breathes. 

You try and let go, but his fingers circle your wrists and he holds you there. He looks at you with serious, vulnerable eyes before he turns his head slowly and kisses you on the palm. You want to cry again.

‘I mean it,’ you say. ‘What we have, it goes beyond quadrants. It’s ...’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘Karkat, I know.’

Do you kiss him now? You’re looking into each other’s eyes, hands still on his face, pusher growing or squeezing or something, in a way that feels like love ... Seconds pass and you think you’ve lost the natural moment, you doubted yourself and you’re still doubting, you don’t know what you’re doing. You realise, all of a sudden, that your first kiss wasn’t his, not now that he has Davepeta’s experiences. You think it would have been, if it weren’t for that. 

‘Could you please kiss me?’ he says, a worried kind of choked humour in his voice.

‘Yeah,’ you say, unnecessarily, before you press your lips to his.


End file.
